Ex-Illinois prison guard accused of trafficking assault weapons

Early this year, former Illinois prison guard Dwayne Meeks was talking to an ex-inmate he had befriended in the penitentiary, complaining about the country's gun-control climate after the Connecticut school massacre.

The conversation, which was caught on a secret FBI recording, wasn't about gun violence or about how to solve it. Instead, federal prosecutors alleged, Meeks was concerned about the damper the school shooting had put on his lucrative gunrunning business.

"Man, it's a mess out there," Meeks is alleged to have said to the convicted felon, who was secretly working with the FBI. "Nobody's sellin' nuttin'. … Obama finnin' to cancel, uh, all the assault stuff and their clips. … They on back order."

Prosecutors allege Meeks, 48, sold several machine guns and assault rifles to the informant last year.

Meeks, who currently lives in Little Rock, Ark., was arrested Wednesday by FBI agents after he traveled to the Chicago area to sell more firearms to the former inmate, who was posing as a middleman for a gang member, according to a criminal complaint unsealed this week. Meeks was charged with dealing firearms without a federal license and selling firearms to a felon. He was jailed pending a detention hearing Monday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.

The former inmate, whose name was not disclosed, told agents he met Meeks while he was serving time several years ago and kept in touch with him after his release, prosecutors said. In a string of intercepted emails and phone conversations beginning last May, Meeks candidly discussed weapons he could get from an Alabama supplier, including military-style assault rifles designed for "urban warfare."

In one conversation in July, Meeks asked the undercover informant about the violence in Chicago he'd seen covered in the news.

"Yeah they rough up here man," the complaint quoted the informant as saying. "That's why my man is doing what he's doing, because he living in Chicago and he's putting a little bit of fear over here and a little bit over there. ... These (expletive) are going loco out here, believe me man."

The next week, Meeks and the informant met in a suburban Cook County forest preserve where Meeks allegedly sold him eight high-powered firearms, including a .50-caliber assault rifle that Meeks described as "a cannon," according to the complaint. The informant paid Meeks $15,000 for the weapons plus a $3,000 delivery fee, authorities said.

According to the complaint, Meeks discussed selling additional firearms to the former inmate, but a deal planned for the end of July 2012 fell through after another mass shooting, this one at a theater in Aurora, Colo.

During the last two weeks, Meeks and the former inmate are alleged to have discussed one more deal. Meeks was arrested Wednesday when he arrived at the forest preserve where their previous meeting took place, according to federal prosecutors. Three AR-15 assault rifles were seized.

Illinois corrections spokesman Tom Shaer said Meeks was hired as a prison guard in 1993 and voluntarily left in 2006, when he worked at a now-shut halfway house on Chicago's West Side. He had no disciplinary history.